


Haunting

by Gail Riordan (lferion)



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, The Haunting (1999)
Genre: Freeverse, Gen, Poetry, fear exercises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-07-27
Updated: 1999-07-27
Packaged: 2017-10-07 22:00:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/69664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lferion/pseuds/Gail%20Riordan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An exercise in fear</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haunting

  
I am not afraid.

What then, O student, is terror?  
The body knows two terrors, quick and still  
The mind and heart and spirit know numberless,  
Each unique and all the same  
To dumb and sensate flesh.

I am not afraid.

What is there, then, to be afraid of?  
The seduction of the mind into madness?  
Knowing that what you see  
Cannot be, yet is?  
Knowing that what you hear  
Not what you fear, is  
Ordinary noises, &amp; not

I am not afraid.

It's all a mass psychosis  
Directed from the screen  
Were you sucked in?  
Shadows sticking softly  
In the corner of your eye  
Voices in the corner of your ear  
Did you hear them?

I am not afraid.

Perception slides and shifts  
Seeming insignificant  
Now here, nowhere, here now  
Where? No? Here?  
The sounds of seeming unraveling  
A part, now, not apart,  
Participates in presence  
And the watcher leaves  
The sunlit lands behind--

I am not afraid.

One step, another, faster  
and faster, and faster  
and the breath catches in the throat  
sawing quick, ragged and dry  
squeezing the heart, pummelling the lungs  
and the skin clutches tightly to bone  
Are you running?  
Are you dreaming?  
Both?  
Did you know eyes could scream?

I am not afraid.

You will be.  
You will be.

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when I think too much -- The Haunting meets Star Wars and long thought on the nature of not only Jedi training and master/apprentice relationships, but also any kind of personal &amp; spiritual discipline, particularly as demonstrated on-screen by Liam Neeson both in person &amp; in character (*both* characters in this case). And there's a little bit of Babylon 5 Ranger stuff mixed in as well. I'm nothing if not eclectic.
> 
> "Now here, nowhere, here now" is a reference to Diana Wynne Jones' Fire and Hemlock.  
> "leaves/The sunlit lands behind" is a ref to CSLewis' The Silver Chair.  
> "Did you know eyes could scream?" The staircase sequence in the film. Now that takes courage. Brrrr.  
> And anyone who doesn't hear Yoda saying the last two lines hasn't been paying attention :-).


End file.
